Support Worker

The Growth Company’s (GC) Justice Services are looking for a Support Worker to deliver rehabilitation and Employment Training and Education support for individuals and groups within our Creating Future Opportunities (CFO) Evolution Programme within our Activity Hub.

You will be dual trained as a Support Worker and Activity Facilitator, providing advice, guidance, coaching, mentoring and support to a caseload of participants via regular 1:1 meetings and group interventions as appropriate.

We help to make a lasting difference to the lives of people throughout the North of England and beyond, by supporting individuals to gain meaningful employment.

Our highly skilled advisers and keyworkers work with a range of individuals; from people who have found themselves recently out of work, to those with complex barriers such as physical disabilities, mental ill-health and debt.

Key Responsibilities:

• Identify individual learning needs and create action plans.
• Plan training and other interventions for each participant.
• Develop interaction with participants and establish a rapport and supportive relationship.
• Enable participants to access and use information.
• Record interventions and activities and progression on the CRM system and coordinate further activity with customers.
• Provide support for the participant to implement future courses of action.
• Deliver further interventions with participants as required, assisting them to decide on options for meeting their needs and provide support for participants in planning a course of action.
• Prepare and develop resources to support learning.
• Facilitate learning in groups to improve communication and social interaction and to improve employability and progression through presentations and activities.
• Job-match and job-broker into employment opportunities.

About You:

• Working with offenders, or those disaffected and marginalised from mainstream services, in training, guidance, advice and counselling environments.
• Have strong interpersonal, communication and negotiation skills.
• Ability to work in a target-driven environment, with a focus on the successful achievement of outcomes for participants.
• High level guidance skills, with the ability to deliver one-to-one and group sessions to at least Grade 2 standard.
• A warm, approachable empathetic style and the ability to establish a rapport and build relationships with participants that supports their progression to education, training and employment and facilitates desistance from crime.

Skills Required:

• Information Advice and Guidance and / or teaching qualifications, (or equivalent), desired, but experience working intensively with individuals and supporting their progression is most important.
• Knowledge regarding the issues affecting the rehabilitation of offenders, and desistance theory.
• Knowledge of National Probation Services or HM Prison environments and/or training, education, and employment opportunities locally and nationally, and of training and guidance.
• Strong interpersonal, communication and negotiation skills.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of everyone including vulnerable adults and young people, we expect all staff to share this commitment. All Education and Skills appointments will be subject to Safer Recruitment Procedures which include a DBS check and a professional social media check. These checks will be conducted by Due Diligence Limited (DDC Ltd) on behalf of GC. Please note that the successful candidate will not be required to pay for this.

If you are on the Barred List, it is against the law to apply and to be hired for a role that includes regulated activity with the concerned group.

We are committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce, we provide a guaranteed interview to applicants who meet the essential requirements for a role. This commitment applies to candidates who have a disability or are from a diverse ethnic community.

As part of our application process, you can ask to be considered under this scheme if you are from an ethnic community or have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Providing that you meet the essential criteria for the role, you will then be invited for an interview. Your guaranteed interview application will only be shared with the Hiring Manager and our Internal Recruitment Team.

We are a member of the national campaign Ban the Box; this campaign aims to open opportunities for people with convictions to compete for jobs. We re supporting the campaign by removing conviction questions at the applications stage.

GC aims to promote a culture of flexibility and agile working. Going forward we will be transitioning to a culture where full agile working will be a feature of many of our roles. We also recognise that there may be a need for more permanent flexibility in your working arrangements and in such cases, we encourage you to have these discussions at the interview stage, to enable your flexible working request to be considered as early as possible.

All GC colleagues will work inline with the Health & Safety at work act and the GC Health & Safety Policy.